By Abigail Connolly
Jan. 26, Neil Young, world renowned singer-songwriter and musical artist, released a statement regarding his desire to remove his work from Spotify, the popular music streaming service.
Young begins the statement stating: “Spotify has recently become a very damaging force via its public misinformation and lies about COVID.” He further states that he learned of this issue after reading that hundreds of doctors and health officials had been attempting to combat “life-threatening COVID falsehoods” that were being spread through Spotify programming.
The content to which Young is referring to is an open letter signed by 270 medical professionals condemning Spotify for “enabling its hosted media to damage public trust in scientific research and sow doubt in the credibility of data-driven guidance.” The professionals were referring specifically to a popular Spotify podcast, the “Joe Rogan Experience,” which on its 1,757th episode featured the controversial, Dr. Robert Malone. Malone had previously been banned from Twitter for violating the platform’s COVD-19 misinformation policies and became popular amongst anti-vaccine audiences due to his claim that he “invented” mRNA vaccines, which is a blatant lie.
Supporters of podcast host, Joe Rogan, argue that his decision to feature Malone on an episode demonstrates a dedication to hosting a neutral show, citing Rogan’s own encouragement of receiving the COVID-19 vaccination. Criticizers argue that Rogan has simply given a raging lunatic a platform to continue to spread his lies and misinformation. Rogan has previously been praised as a fierce protector of free speech, however, given the fact that free speech has the potential to harm others, especially over a topic that has serious life or death implications, like the COVID-19 vaccine, Rogan should take responsibility for hosting and producing a show featuring someone so keen on spreading dangerous and false information.
While the doctors in the letter seemed to take issue with Spotify’s involvement in allowing the podcast episode to be accessible without any regard to spreading harmful COVID-19 information, the media appears to be taking an approach that Rogan is to blame. While this is certainly a fault of Rogan and his fellow producers, it is important to consider the ways in which people get information in the modern day. Numerous media outlets and news organizations host podcasts on the streaming service, Spotify has become a way people receive news and interact with each other. Other media outlets like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have policies in place regarding posts containing COVID-19 information. Despite the fact that Spotify features less user created content, it is still an area in which people share and receive information and therefore it is a huge oversight on Spotify’s end to not have similar policies in place.
Young is not making a huge monetary gain by making the decision to pull his music from Spotify. He is, in fact, losing 60% of his worldwide streaming by choosing to remove his content from the platform. This decision is not one that Young and his representatives from Warner Brothers Reprise have taken lightly. The fact that Young was able to make such a decision, “in the name of Truth,” as he puts it, leaves hope that there are people so dedicated to the health and wellness of their fellow world citizens.
Image via Flickr
